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Twisted About
It's always fascinating to Soubrette the things that fall to rot in the empire. And the jobs people will send random adventurers out on to fix, investigate, or pillage from that decay. Also, the foolishness of adventurers to take such jobs, without knowing much about the gig in the first place. Soubrette being chief among those fools, who'll accept just about any job with a bit of coin, or a bit of excitement as the payout. So the idea of raiding a tower full of ogres seemed fine enough at the time. The Arathi highlands were a bit boring. Too spread out if you asked her. The ruins of Stormgarde were more to her liking. Plus, as a side bonus, there were plenty of Syndicate chumps to pick pocket (you never saw a bigger grin on a girl's face when Soubrette learned that if those fools misplace their syndicate marker they wind up taking the dirt nap). So Soubrette made her way back to the ruins, for once steering clear of the Syndicate controlled area and heading back around the main keep to the area inhabited by the ogres. Soubrette decided against fighting through the handful of ogres in the lower areas of the city, and decided to take the high ground, scooting along the ledge of the upper ramparts. The city proper had been reduced to timbers and shattered shells of the shops and homes that must've once made this ruin a right proper outpost of civilization. Ogres and even a few trolls moved about the crumbled remains of this particular part of Stormgarde. The thought of those loathsome beasts living in the burnt out remains of a human town didn't do much to raise Soubrette's ire... it more than once crossed her mind that Stormwind itself might benefit from a few towering heaps of Ogre shit to clear the stench of corruption from Cathedral Square, but she was still thoroughly excited when she spotted the tower that was her objective at the far end of the yard. The tower used to apparently be some seat of arcane power, defended by autonomous magical guardians. Soubrette had already been sent out once to acquire relics of the time, and now was sent to reboot the defenses and snatch one final artifact. The ledge she was walking along allowed her to drop in behind the tower, and rounding along the base of it, brought her to a lovely cauldron of bumbling stew of unknown origin and a lone Ogre acting as slop cook. Soubrette dispatched the aspiring culinary master without much fanfare and returned to sneaking around the base of the tower towards the entrance. The defensive turrets were right at the entry way to the tower, and the control mechanism was there as well. Her first task was to activate the defenses to create a diversion, and then steal or otherwise acquire one final artifact. Soubrette had never seen magical defenses in action and was sincerely interested to see what happened when she fired up the controls. Unfortunately an Ogre shaman was standing right next to the control device. A quick whack on the back of the head with the very power crystal Soubrette was using to power up the defenses and the shaman was out cold. Fitting the crystal into the controls Soubrette felt almost like a kid waiting for a magic show to begin. The stone dais that served as the power crystal's base gave a lurching shift, and then the circular stone surface began to tick off, in grating stony fashion, clockwise, as blue light illuminated odd shaped runes along the stones outer ring. Soubrette pulled a lever and waited for the show to begin. The noise of the grating stone alerted the Ogres, and Soubrette decided to back off a bit and hide behind the stonework of the stairway leading into the tower. Soubrette still had a decent view of the defensive turrets at the base of the tower and stood on her tip toes to maintain her vantage. After a few short moments the blue light from the control panel had lit up a small track leading to each of the two turrets at the base of the tower. Which then set the tops of the turrets to rotating. The Ogres certainly didn't like the spinning turrets and one or two even attacked them with their huge stone hammers. Although, it appeared that a small deflection field had formed around the turrets because the Ogre's massive blows had no effect. The turret tops, now spinning quite fast, also began to glow with bright blue light. The light grew more intense as the devices spun even faster. Blue haze began to filter off from the turrets and pool on the ground surrounding the base of the tower. Soubrette waited in eager anticipation to see what would happen next. Her wild hope was for the blue gas to be some ancient aphrodisiac to some magical sea beast which would answer the summons of arousal from the nearby sea and lay waste to the Ogres of Stormgarde after finding out that it was Ogres who were covered in its favorite musk, as opposed to whatever preferred lover magical sea beasts had. But alas, there was no summoned horny or otherwise destructive sea beast, although the initial outcome was no less amazing. As the turrets spun at blazing speed and the pool of blue gas grew thick around the feet of the Ogres a high pitched noise sounded. And in one brilliant, blinding blue flash a half dozen water elementals appeared and begun to immediately attack the Ogres. The Ogres, blinded momentarily by the flash of light were caught unaware as the elementals appeared. The Ogres standing closest to the turrets were quickly brought down and dispatched, there screams caught up in a swell of blows from the water elementals, the remaining Ogres made clumsy retreat to the tower stairs. Soubrette was almost at the point of joining the fight, when a loud rumbling could be heard coming from the tower. Soubrette thought that the tower defenses had a few more tricks up its sleeve, but when she turned to look, all she saw were a stream of Ogres pouring out of the tower. The added number of Ogres were more than enough to "turn the tide" of battle as it were, but in retrospect the poor elementals stood little chance of defending the tower, let alone the city itself. The crush of Ogres beating the elementals into puddles did provide Soubrette ample opportunity to slip inside the tower unnoticed, but upon gaining the safety of the shadows inside the tower Soubrette couldn't help but think on how paltry that defense turned out to be. No wonder Stormgarde was covered in Ogre dung. Not one to linger on thoughts of dung, Soubrette made her way carefully up the winding stairways of the tower. The majority of the tower's Ogre defenders had raced out to deal with the elementals. The remaining patrols were easily avoided and Soubrette soon found herself on the topmost landing, staring at the shelves and other adornments of the tower penthouse, looking for the artifact she'd need to collect her payment. A small gilded chest guarded by another shaman seemed like the most obvious answer, and another quick whack on the head produced another drowsy Ogre and one shiny artifact of ancient arcane power to be turned in for duly earned rewards. The thought of just how dry Soubrette's daggers had remained on this mission was playing on her mind as she reached the stairway to head back down. Soubrette's mind was further distracted by the sight of a large number of wet but otherwise very excited Ogres re-entering the tower...thus blocking the most logical escape route. It was somewhere at the crossroads of those two distracting thoughts that Soubrette's feet somehow forgot how to negotiate stairs, because before she knew it she was tumbling down several of them with no real grace of movement to speak of. Soubrette's ankle twisted horribly on the initial fall, but worse than that, how she eventually landed caused the tie on one of her pouches to come loose sending a handful of small shaped charges rolling off the edge of the stair, tumbling merrily through the air and landing smack dab atop the heads of the now wet and battle crazed pack of Ogres just now getting back into the tower. The charges were light, not meant to destroy anything... so the Ogre's were fine. Well, not fine, they were angry. And Soubrette was cursing herself for announcing her presence by dropping a handful of distraction charges on an already angry pack of Ogres. Furthermore, the noise from the charges, and the sounds of the Ogres now charging up the small wooden staircases alerted the Ogres in the topmost landing bring them to bear on Soubrette's position. Soubrette had a gut feeling this wouldn't end pleasantly. If anything was working in Soubrette's favor it might be the dumb luck, that while she lay on her backside, twisted foot, and blush red from making an idiot's mistake, and with not to mention, a small army of Ogres on their way to smash her into bits she chanced to glance at her side and noticed a small window that had escaped her attention on the climb up the tower... and as present events may dictate...thusly be her only way down the tower. But there was an old saying among the thieves and cut throats Soubrette used to pal around with in Stormwind when she was a youth. "Where there's a window, there's a way!" So Soubrette wasted no time in testing that age old adage once again. Using what speed and where withal she had left, and being careful not to put too much weight on her twisted ankle, Soubrette took a mad leap from the stairwell landing, hoping to find purchase on the window sill a few feet away. Swan-like grace had checked out of this adventure a few minutes earlier, now Soubrette relied on simple base necessity. Her leap was hampered by the limited use of her left foot, and she just barely made the jump, landing hard, half in, and half out of the window. Her wind, knocked nearly out of her by the clumsy jump, her upper body dangling out the window 20 feet up, her ass... wiggling shamelessly in the tower as she tried to scuttle out the window entirely. Soubrette could have swore she felt the tower shift as an Ogre apparently attempted to make the jump from the landing to the window as well. And she absolutely felt it when that same Ogre went crashing down to the floor of the tower, her gut telling her, taking out part of a stairwell along the way by the sounds of snapping lumber. Eventually gaining purchase with her feet, Soubrette managed to get out the window, and whispering a soft prayer for luck took a second jump straight out into the air, hoping to make it from the tower, to the same raised battlement she'd used to sneak over to the tower to begin with. Soubrette had the briefest moment to appreciate the wind on her face before she slammed into the hard earth of the raised battlement. She went immediately into a roll, and came up with her rifle unslung from her shoulder. She took careful aim and placed a shot square on the lever to the defense system. Her round sent into action the spinning turrets and just to be sure the second wave of elementals got a bit of payback, Soubrette chucked a stunner charge towards the doorway to the tower, catching a couple Ogres in the blast radius and giving the defense apparatus a few seconds to power up. Just as she was patting herself on the back for her killer aim, a shadow grew on Soubrette's position. Apparently, an Ogre had gotten the bright idea to lob a huge chunk of masonry off the top of the tower down onto Soubrette. Soubrette had probably meant to leap safely out of the way of the huge chunk of rock falling towards her but with her twisted foot, her leap aside turned into an awkward wobble backwards, accidentally sending her tumbling once again into open air. Only this time, the drop was several hundred feet.... and no magical sea beasts waited for her at the bottom, only sharp rocks. The wall of Stormgarde keep retreated rapidly in one direction, as the nice death inducing rocks rushed up to meet her in the other. Soubrette's only chance was the use her hearthstone. Reaching in her pouch, rubbing the surface of that odd little stone, muttering the joke "there's no place like home" hoping to maybe speed up the spell... wondering all the while if these things worked while falling to your death. The familiar green glow surrounded her. It was gonna be close... Soubrette had the thought that if there were some magical sea beast, lonely and dejected cruising the sea below, at least maybe she might provide respite from it's boredom by presenting a lovely green comet crashing to earth. The roar of the wind was amazing... Oh well. Just another trip to the spirit healer... *thump* Soubrette winced at the impact. Believe it or not, this would not be the first time she died falling from tall heights, it usually wasn't pleasant but to her relief, the thump was that of salty plank wood, and not the snap, crunch, thump of jagged sea rock. Which could only mean that Soubrette was safely back in Booty Bay. The goblin bartender looked up from the bar to glance at Soubrette sprawled on the floor, windblown and beaming with the knowledge of a death narrowly avoided, and then went back to tending his bar. Soubrette got to her feet, being sure to avoid her left foot, and hopped to a nearby chair. The artifact she'd been sent to recover was secure in her backpack, and unless a bullet riddled activation lever constitutes failure, she's quite sure she activated the defense system as well. It'd require a flight back out to the Arathi Highlands, but Soubrette didn't mind. The thought of a cold silver compress to nurse her swollen ankle put a smile on her face. The cold wind on the flight over Iron Forge would also help her foot, and the thought of lonely sea beasts, disappointed over not seeing green comets go splat would keep Soubrette's mind amusedly occupied along the way... at least until she got paid, and the task of making a splint out of silver coins needed taking care of.